Public The fame monster: Unintended consequence of fame for psychological science (2019) Ferguson, C.J.

Woolie · Mar 19, 2019

Thought this might be of interest to some of you hard sciencers out there. When you read it, you just keep thinking of Sharpe, White and Wessely.

Scihub link here

Abstract:

Scientific fields often assign fame to certain individuals and studies to delineate a narrative about the field's importance, success, and contribution to knowledge.However, such assignations of fame can result in a situation wherein assumptions of scientific merit may follow from fame, rather than fame following from clear scientific merit. This can result in several problems for the field including conflicts of interest in peer review, resistance to disconfirmatory results, politicization of some research areas, and may contribute to psychology's replication crisis. It is suggested that principles of replicability, transparency and open science can,ultimately, help psychological science identify those empirical results which are most verifiable and, as such, deserving of“fame.”
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Snowdrop · Mar 19, 2019

There must have been some robust discussion pre-publication. It was submitted in 2017.
I like the Feynman quote as well. Gotta believe he's right.

“Reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled.” RF

Woolie · Mar 20, 2019

Some interesting passages:

The reification of fame can result in situations in which particular individuals have outsized control over peer review, particular of data that both supports and challenges their own personal beliefs. Famous scholars in a particular field may be oversampled to provide peer re-view. As a consequence, they become unusually powerful in regard to reject/accept decisions for new work in their field, including work that may challenge their own beliefs and findings. ... some analyses suggest that peer review is generally susceptible to herding behavior around popular theories (Park, Peacey, & Munafò, 2014) and research supports that expert reviewers are hostile to data that conflicts with either their personal views or popular theories (Phillips, 2011). Given that myside bias is just as strong among the intelligent and educated (Stanovich, West, & Toplak, 2013) this can create a situation in which famous scholars act as gatekeepers regarding data that might challenge their own work. Fame then can become one source of publication bias as well as produce a culture of obligatory replications (Ioannidis, 2012) in which theory supportive research is preferred over disconfirmatory research. ... obligatory replications can spread to the degree to which theory-confirming results are preferred for publication over null or falsifying results.
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The development of rigid ideological theories promoted by their fame can occur in any research field no matter how dull to the general public... But both psychological theories and individual psychologists can attract fame for the perceived moral value of their work. This can amplify the resistance of such theories to falsification given that such theories are perceived as contributing to the public good or protecting vulnerable individuals (children, racial or sexual minorities, women, disabled individuals, etc., see Ferguson,2013) or, conversely, protecting social narratives, liberal or conservative, to which academic psychology has become aligned. In other words, scholarly work is often judged for its moralistic value rather than rigor.
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Motivation to achieve eminence can result in unhealthy behaviors on the part of scholars. To achieve fame, scholars can become keyed into perverse incentive structures that promote attention seeking at the cost of high-quality science. Resulting behaviors include p-hacking(attempting to convert non-significant results into significant results), publishing numerous papers rather than a few high-quality studies,publishing papers with counter-intuitive shocking results likely to garner newspaper headlines, and refusal to incorporate disconfirmatory results into a theoretical world-view. The result can create afield that is more histrionic than high-quality. Fame is privileged over high-quality, good science, which can often be slow, incremental, and tedious.
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Remind you of anything?

Esther12 · Mar 20, 2019

Thanks for the excerpts.

A brief mention of PACE rom the same author: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/may-2016/our-struggle-between-science-and-pseudoscience

And the refusal by scholars in the PACE trial of chronic fatigue treatment to release data revealed continued problems with transparency in published science (see Coyne, 2015b).
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Sean · Mar 20, 2019

In other words, scholarly work is often judged for its moralistic value rather than rigor.
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And its value in constructing a narrative, and (separately) in gaining and retaining power.

The result can create afield that is more histrionic than high-quality.
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he he

Woolie · Mar 20, 2019

Esther12 said: ↑

Thanks for the excerpts.

A brief mention of PACE rom the same author: https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-29/may-2016/our-struggle-between-science-and-pseudoscience
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Great find, @Esther12!

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